Collins` Livens Up His Spy Thriller With Infusion Of Fresh Blood

July 14, 1985|By Reviewed by Richard J. Walton Author of a number of books on American foreign policy, among them ``Cold War and Counter-revolution: The Foreign Policy of John F. Kennedy``.

Fall from Grace

By Larry Collins

Simon & Schuster, 475 pages, $17.95

It`s more than 40 years now since World War II ended in Europe and still the novels come pouring out. Already this year I`ve read eight, and no doubt I`ve missed a few.

Some might wonder why that war fascinates all these decades--and all these wars--later, but I don`t. Hitler and the Gestapo and the Nazis still have a unique power to chill, and plainly that evil, that bestiality have a terrible fascination even for those much younger, those with no personal memory of the war.

Whatever the reason, World War II spy thrillers constitute a genre whose popularity seems to grow rather than diminish as the events on which they are based recede in time. This one, by Larry Collins (co-author with Dominique Lapierre of such best sellers as ``Is Paris Burning?`` and ``O, Jerusalem``)

is one of the good ones.

It transcends the genre while providing all the elements readers expect of it: the daring and resourceful double agent; the ravishing beauty no less resourceful or daring; the Gestapo satrap, personally fastidious who nonetheless orders his thugs to torture while wishing with a sigh that he weren`t forced into it by his victims` stubbornness; the brilliant but cynical spymaster in London; the courageous members of the Resistance. They`re all here along with the suspense, the narrow escapes, the sense of the ring closing in, while the historic figures (Churchill, Hitler, Eisenhower, Rommel) move in the background. Good stuff.

The story, as usual in this genre, is based on fact. The Allies, fearful

--with good cause--that the landing on Normandy might be smashed if the Germans throw against it the full weight of their Western armies, attempt a desperate deception. They try to convince Hitler and his generals that the main blow will fall not on Normandy but on Calais, thus causing them to withhold for a few crucial days a critical portion of the German forces.

But, of course, the Allies can`t just tell Hitler that; they`ve got to make the Nazis believe that, with the utmost difficulty, they are uncovering the ``truth`` about the invasion. How the Allies fabricate entire armies is damnable clever.

This requires duplicity piled upon duplicity, with Paul, the French double agent, convincing his Gestapo boss that he is most loyal of traitors, and Catherine, the English-French beauty, twice slipping into France at great peril. Naturally, they are thrown together and fall in love--though if it`s love scenes you`re looking for, stick to Harlequin.

The rest of the story is generally taut (though it could use a bit of tightening here and there), and it also goes beyond the easy Allies-versus-Nazis morality. While there is no doubt as to which side is morally superior, the Allies do things, not only to the Nazis but also to their own people, that raise insistently the ancient question: Do the ends justify the means?

Indeed, this difficult question is debated by the world-weary British spymaster Sir Henry Ridley and an idealistic young American officer, T.F. O`Neill. Sir Henry doesn`t blink at the fact that he orders some pretty dreadful things--the reader will be horrified by one scene involving Catherine --and makes it plain he would order even worse if necessary to defeat Hitler.

And he patiently counsels O`Neill that America will soon inherit Britain`s role and must put behind it its naive notions of acceptable behavior. Yet given America`s record as the world`s policeman, it is evident that the ends-versus-means debate is as relevant as ever.

One final observation. It was probably inevitable, given the fact that Americans participated only on the Western fronts, that the flood of books and movies makes it seem that the U.S. won the European war almost single-handed, with a little help from the British, Canadians and Free French. Yet the fact is that something like two-thirds of the German casualties were suffered on the Eastern front at the hands of the Russians.

That, too, is worth pondering in a world that, four decades later, is still largely a consequence of World War II and the strange peace that followed.